


of no pale pastels, but bold colors

by orphan_account



Category: Hamilton - Miranda, Political RPF, Political RPF - US 21st c.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 03:44:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6178936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Election of 2016.</p><p>Or: Ted Cruz makes some mistakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of no pale pastels, but bold colors

**Author's Note:**

> Direct sequel to [EBEORIETEMETHHPITI](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6173257). Read that first.

A rally. Midwest. Corn and baseball caps, American flags perched behind ears. Bright sun piercing through the chill of early spring. Ted knelt to shake hands with a woman in a wheelchair, clasping her gummy fingers between his. The reflection in her glasses showed the man standing behind him.

"There's nothing rich folks like more than coming downtown and slumming it with the poor," Hamilton sang in his ear. He snickered. "Or is it down the farm?"

Ted did not notice he was clenching the woman's hand til she winced and moved to pull away. He mouthed an apology and got to his feet, willing the shakes to subside. He waved at the crowd and they roared, but it didn't send the chill up his spine like it should have. Hamilton put an unseen hand on his shoulder. The weight of it pushed him down. 

 

*

 

Jeff Roe at his shoulder as he picked at his corned beef sandwich in the private section of the tour bus. Jeff smiling. He slapped his iPad down on the desk. "Look at this."

Ted looked. Email from Terry Sullivan. Rubio's campaign manager, he remembered. He read it, and a smile picked at his lips. "Before April?"

"He doesn't win Arizona, he'll step back." Jeff was practically dancing. "You know his base, if they've stuck with him this long, they're not going over to  _Drumpf._ " He said the word with a peculiar moue. Not only was it a meme but a meme foisted by a liberal. He regrouped. "We're going to win in Cleveland, Ted."

"I have never agreed with Rafael once," Hamilton said. He slipped in the seat and touched Ted's knee. "We have fought on like seventy-five different fronts..."

"Shut up."

Jeff blinked. "'Scuse me?"

"Sorry. Sorry." Ted shook his head, put on what he hoped was a friendly smile. "That wasn't directed at you."

There was no one else on the section. Jeff looked at him, tongue at his teeth, and then said "Okay. I'll let you - what should I tell Terry?"

"Tell him - tell him thank you for telling us, and we wish him all the best of luck in, in." Hamilton's hand tightened. Ted swallowed. "In the rest of the race. However long that may be."

Jeff nodded. He retrieved the iPad and left. Ted tossed his sandwich onto the plate and turned. "You - "

But Hamilton was already gone.

 

*

 

The Need. It broke open in front of him, raw and jagged. Ted under the comforter of the most expensive hotel in Detroit. He had to make a speech tomorrow. He had to talk about Flint. Fuck Flint. Flint was a masterwork and Snyder should be commended on the toll. Snyder would be commended. Ever since his emergence from the egg in 1928 he had searched for men like Snyder, men who sowed pain and reaped the benefits. Snyder had been clumsy at the last but. But. He could go down to Flint right now and save someone from their lead poisoning with one quick blast. Wouldn't that be a better way to be taken off this earth, one quick blast and not years of sponging anti-seizure medication off the government tit? Wouldn't that be better for America? His hand spasmodically clenched around an invisible gun.

The bed bowed. Springs creaked. Knuckles lightly on his neck, the pads of the fingers ink-stained. Smell of parchment and museums. Hamilton lowered his mouth to Ted's ear. 

"The other fifty-one," he said, and when Ted didn't answer he took hold of his shoulder and squeezed. " _The other fifty-one_ , Rafael. Remember them?"

"Yes," Ted whispered into the pillow.

He felt the squeeze fade. Hamilton sat up on the bed. 

"You better," he said, and there was a silence. His presence no longer creaked on the springs. 

Ted lay awake, breathing hard.

 

*

Marco lost Arizona. Marco withdrew with great grace and dignity, and then he called Ted's direct line. Urgency upon them now. They talked deep into the night, deep enough that the sun was breaking at the horizon by the time he lay down his head, but when he rose after ninety minutes of sleep he was clear-headed and smiling. A cinch. This would be a cinch.

He proved it over the rest of the month, when he collected states like butterflies and pinned them carefully to the corkboard of his ascendancy. Trump close behind but fluttering now. The cracks in him visible. Oh yes. Oh  _yes_. Ted allowed himself to relax.

Heidi, lovely Heidi, gave him a gift before his flight to New York. She pressed it into his hand right before security, pressed a kiss to his cheek. She'd be there tomorrow. He looked at the iPod in his hand, scrolled through it, smiled. Dear Heidi. All of his favorite musicals, all of his favorite cast recordings. It must have taken hours for the interns to arrange the playlists.

He made his way through security with ease and waited for his bodyguards to be wanded through. He slipped in his headphones and for the first hour of the flight listened to Ethel Merman as Reno Sweeney. The stewardess came over with a bourbon on the rocks and when he reached to take it his elbow jarred the shuffle button. next to normal. All right. He turned off the shuffle and settled into the song. He liked Aaron Tveit.  _I am what you want me to be, a_ _nd I'm your worst fear, y_ _ou'll find it in me..._

"Come closer," said an unbidden voice in his ear. Hamilton on the aisle seat. He had a three-ring binder in his hand. "I've been reading your tax plan, Rafael, and I have to say..."

Ted downed the bourbon and, coughing, waved the stewardess over for another. 

 

*

 

Cleveland. His grin stretched tight over his face. The crowd a sea of red before him. _America The Beautiful_ piping in over the loudspeakers. Marco at his side. They'd made this deal. They would make others, in future, but this deal was the best one. Cruz/Rubio 2016, for A Better America. Thirteen hundred delegates, baby. The razor-thin margin bothered him not at all. Trump had retreated in a huff. Probably on some Caribbean island somewhere enchancing his tan. Our long national nightmare is over.

Hamilton appeared. Perched himself in front of the podium. Marco squawked and grabbed on to his arm but Ted covered the microphone and shoved him away. "Smile, idiot," he gritted, under his breath.

"But -" Marco gasping, too loud, his fingers still seeking comfort. "Ted - "

"No one else can see him.  _Smile."_

"Here comes the general," Hamilton oozed, "and his right-hand man." His smile fell away. "Do you  _really_ want to eliminate the IRS? Is that really something you want to do?"

Ted waved, and smiled. Hamilton had his binder out, leafed through it. Marco, the moron, kept looking at him. "Do you know how deranged that is? I've been doing some math, and - "

There were some people in the front row looking askance at how tightly he was gripping the podium. Ted uncupped his hand from the microphone, shuffled his papers.

"I'm talking to you," Hamilton said, waving his hand in front of Ted's face. He snapped the binder shut and pushed it at Marco. Marco, terrified, did not take it. "Hello? Can you show me some basic politeness?"

"My fellow Americans," Ted said, as Hamilton's fingers passed through his skull, "we are here tonight..."

 

*

 

They'd filmed the whole thing, broadcast it on CNN, and a lot of sour liberals had been watching. Marcosquawk.mp4 went viral. It appeared on the front page of the New York Times, of the Guardian, of Haaretz and the Financial Times and Xinhua and the CBC. John Oliver did a segment on it. Flash mobs of squawkers appeared outside of campaign HQ. Marco apologized best he could, but the damage was done. This couldn't be why there was a freefall in the polls but it had to be. He stood at the podium in Philadelphia and heard a chorus of squawks from the back. Protesters, jumping to the side in unison and grabbing their partners' arms. Ted's mouth went thin. He did not call for security but they arrived anyway, ushered the squawkers out. One shoved too hard and the resultant brawl dragged on for nearly five minutes. 

He went out that night and shot a jogger. The man's brains plastered across the nearby tree. His blood in black runnels around him. Ted stood over him, gun smoking, and listened to his heart beat. Need so assuaged, he felt much calmer. They could frame the brawl as the incivility of Democrats. No problem. He tucked the gun into his pocket, adjusted his Coke-bottle frames over his eyes, and went back to the hotel.

Hamilton opened the door before the keycard was out of the slot and stood looking at him, his dark eyes deep and frightening as the ocean. Ted stuttered back, hand to his mouth. Hamilton leaned over and pulled the gun out of his pocket. Swiped his thumb against the mouth of it. 

"I told you, Rafael." Hamilton soft, dangerous.

Ted squeezed his eyes shut, expecting - 

\- but nothing happened. When he opened his eyes he saw the gun on the floor and nothing else. He was wary, but as the minutes ticked by and still nothing happened his shoulders went down and he took in a deep breath.

Ted washed the blood off his jeans and the sweatshirt in the shower, dabbed at the stains with peroxide. He slept better than he had since 1977. 

 

*

There had been a challenge filed in a Pennsylvania court. That was months ago. He'd ignored it. The campaign had ignored it. But then Sri Srinivasan had been confirmed in an unimaginably quick flurry, and he'd put on his robes, and the challenge wended its way up, up, up, and now. He'd shooed his staff out of the conference room so he could watch the verdict by himself. So he could sight unseen dig his hands into his face, claw down his cheeks. 5-4 split.  _Ineligible._ It was October 29th. 

(Marco, flurried texts to his personal line appearing on his phonescreen like lightning bolts:  _We can save this Ted. We can save it. Christie? Fiorina? Call down Ryan? Is Ryan a viable veep choice for me? We can save this, Ted, for the party if not for you._ Pause.  _I'm sos orry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry_ )

He did not want to stagger to the apartment, into Heidi's waiting arms. He had an assistant book the best hotel in DC. He had the concierge bring up a bottle of Cristal. He nearly broke the neck taking the cork out and chugged it like a high school junior at their first kegger. He clutched his chest as if to take his racing heart in hand and crush the life out of it.

"Never gonna be president now."

Hamilton's voice out of the darkness. Ted jerked around, still clutching his chest. It had been months. Not since the night of the jogger. Hamilton was crosslegged on the hotel bed. Navy sheets with gold piping on the pillows, tassels on the lamp. Hamilton fingered one, and he fixed Ted with not a smile but a look of pure determination. "The other fifty-one, Ted. I told you."

"Srinivasan," Ted croaked. "They confirmed him so fast...I thought there'd be more of a fight..."

Hamilton's eyebrow spiked up. He had a creased slip of paper in his hand. Ted couldn't see what it was. "I might have conferred with some people." He did smile now, a wicked grin. "Never gonna be president now. One less thing to worry about, hum?"

Ted lunged. Hamilton tsked and disappeared. The Cristal bottle jerked off the table and broke on the floor, its richness soaking into the carpet. Ted fell on his knees. Memory of a hotel in Couer d'Alene. The same hot tears tracking down his face, the same wads of snot. Only now it was worse because it wasn't just him wet. Not just him on his knees. It was America. It was America.

"Hamilton," he grunted, through clenched teeth. " _Hamilton."_

One first in the air, shaking. " _HAMILTON!_ "

Hamilton did not come back. The sobs came now, and he pressed his forehead into the carpet. His phone buzzing, buzzing. Marco scrambling. Everyone scrambling. No use. No use.

It was over. It was done. 

He drove his fist into the ground, cutting his hand on the glass.

 

*

 

The White House went blue.

Even given the circumstances, the landslide was embarrassing.

 

*

 

 

 

 

(Sometime later, the DC police, investigating a murder in a public park, found a note tucked in the jacket pocket of the body. Strange symbols, arranged in what looked like words. Dusting revealed that it was littered with fingerprints. The lab tech, in her boyfriend's Marco Squawks! shirt, blinked at her screen when IAFIS returned a match.

She blinked, and she blinked, and she looked down at her shirt, and a little giggle escaped from her, and she called her boss.)


End file.
